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Coming soon to a theatre near you! It's RUPERT! The wise-cracking, fun-loving Australian urchin who rose to become the world's most beloved man and newspaper oligarch! For the Rupert Murdoch lover in YOUR life! Coming on Trumpsday, 23rd of Trumpruary, 2122!

I like this movie a lot. The music is good. It looks great. But Barnum sold his "freaks" on their physical differences and racist ideas. He didn't think of them as family. He profited off of them and treated them horribly. I'm kind of fine, or at least understand, whitewashing a movie to make a real life person seem not so monstrous by the cultural standards of today. I'm not fine changing that person to a champion of equal rights.

Again this is a case of love the soundtrack but not the movie. The movie is great to look at but anytime starting around the middle of the movie people started talking and not singing I felt the movie really started to drag for me. It has less to do with historical inaccuracies and more about the half baked Zac Efron and Zendaya romance. One one hand I get it that you can't sell a historical musical biopic on the charm of Hugh Jackman alone so you have to spice things up with a younger hotter romance. I get that and I can't fault the movie for throwing it in. However, that doesn't stop it from feeling thrown in. Zac Efron doesn't enter the movie until nearly halfway through and falls in love with Zendaya at first sight. Up to this point I'm not sure she has had a line of dialogue. You have basically two new characters meet. Then there is a bit of stink eye from her trapeze partner who is her... father or brother or something, again underdeveloped character. So he's all lusty eyed and she's whatever. The next time we see them interact is her asking if she's allowed to go meet the queen and Zac is like "Of course." So now they have talked once but the next scene with them is when Zac chooses to go stand in the back with them and they start holding hands. These three scenes are all basically one after the other too. This relationship builds so fast and out of nowhere. What is her attraction to him? Is it just two hot people recognizing the other is hot and they should make it a thing? Zendaya is pretty much a nothing character at that point.The only "freaks" at this point with any kind of story about them are Tom Thumb and the bearded lady. This movie is a very breezy 100 minutes or so. I think that's great, but spending another 10 or so to maybe make Zendaya a character, have more scenes of her and Efron flirting, a song about them meeting and how it was love at first sight or just something more would have sold me on their romance. The rope dance is fantastic but I just can't get into the emotion of it all. The thing is both the characters are completely fictional so you could do whatever with them. How about he works at the bank and he's checking in with PT Barnum about how the place is going and status of the loan. This would lead to him being better with money and again place him in the story earlier and have a chance for earlier and more scenes with Zendaya. Or just more scenes or lines for Zendaya. Maybe have her talk more in the interview. Have her explain to PT how hard it is to be a person of colour at that time. Something. Anything. Just make her more of a character than "trapeze girl." But hey, if it works for you than I'm glad. I just wish there was a little more so it could have worked for me as well.

Just imagine a journalism movie like All The Presidents Men or The Post but it's about News Of The World.

I think having a fictional character who is clearly inspired by Barnum would probably be better for me. Or at least not make him seem like he's the reason his side show performers are a big happy family. Imagine if, 100 years from now, there was a movie made about a scummy racist in 2019 but the movie made them seem like a father figure to the people he exploited. I'll admit I'm not an expert on Barnum. It's possible some of his side show performers lived slightly better lives under him than they would have as poor nobodies. So, idk. I did really like this movie when I saw it in theaters. I'm kind of harping on about this one thing but at least make the performers a family in spite of him instead of because of him. Honestly, that's my only real flaw with this.

Given the problematic reality of the real life Barnum, would it have been better if the movie was entirely fictitious? Would people care enough to see a completely fantastical Musical about a made-up 19th Century huckster, or does the movie need some sliver of reality to make it work?

Apologies for missing the first day of the discussion: I'll try to get in to the forum as much as I can but I hope we can find plenty to discuss here. This movie gets me every time, even though I know there are enough terrible things that mean I shouldn't buy in. 'A Million Dreams' makes me cry every god damned time, and I can't make it through with a dry eye. I don't know, if it's the performance or the content, but the idea of hope and dreams hits me just in the right way at the moment. I love the fantasy version of Barnum and Charity's early relationship, and love the quick transition from urchin into fifty-something Jackman pretending to be thirty years younger. Honestly, I think for me the things I love best are the things that speak to me as a father, so songs like 'From Now On' really strike the right chord with me. Others, not so much. My daughter hates Jenny Lind with a burning passion and refuses to watch her scenes, and that's no great loss. My favourite part of the existence of 'The Greatest Showman' comes from the latest season of The Good Place, which states that Michael and Janet's meddling with the afterlife meant that the world is all messed up: Brexit happened, the Jacksonville Jaguars are good now, and this movie musical about PT Barnum made $400million...

I think where the movie suffers for me is the Jenny Lind bit. Never mind that she was a real person whom the movie does dirty,* everything about her is kind of dull - her song and the whole plot line. I get why it’s there, but I think they could have dug a bit deeper to create the conflict she presents. *I don’t really have an issue with a movie taking an objectively bad person and twisting their ethos to create something positive, but I do get miffed if you take a real life good person and turn them into kind of a heel. I think there was a guy on the Titanic that happened to. I want to say, in the movie, it was the guy who shot at people trying to get to the lifeboats. Apparently, in real life, that guy was a hero and James Cameron made him a bad guy just because the scene required it. I mean, I guess you could just make a person up, but why bother when you can slander someone already in their grave?

I get this, and understand how it can be a deal breaker, but I also there’s something to be said about fictive truth versus historical fact. It’s not like the *movie* is propagating his racist and intolerant beliefs. Honestly, I kind of get a kick out of the movie co-opting his life to tell a story counter to his own beliefs.

Just to start off, I unabashedly love this movie. I love it’s use of modern music and CGI to create a larger than life spectacle. Everything looks and sounds so vibrant as a way of capturing the same sense of awe in a modern audience that witnessing the circus must have imbued in a 19th Century audience. For me, it’s extremely effective.

Ladies and gents, this is the moment you've waited for (woah) We watched:

I agree with this and I am also very curious about why the film even hired Rebecca Ferguson to play her in the first place if they were going to redub her completely after the fact as well. I get them redubbing Tom Thumb (although maybe not give him such a cartoony tough guy voice) because they needed an actor of a certain height, but you're telling me they couldn't find another actress that could sing and act? I read they redubbed it because she's suppose to be this great singer and Rebecca Ferguson wasn't good enough. Why was she cast then? I'm very curious at point in the process was it decided to completely redub her.

That said I loved some of the dance numbers a lot. Visually the rope dance is great. I was particularly a big fan of the Zac Efron and Hugh Jackman number in the bar. Just some sold prop choreography and work there. I also loved some of the little things like the hammering of posters to the rhythm of the song and little touches like that. There is a lot of things in this movie to charm you.

Yeah, it almost is using Barum's show business ideas and practices against him to tell this story. The movie is selling a totally fictitious depiction of a real man in a setting that resembles the real 19th Century America about as much Lawnmower Man was an accurate portrayal of virtual reality technology. Just like the Fiji Mermaid, we, the audience, know it's a sham, but we are here for it because it fascinating and beautiful and we get lost on those Zac Efron eyes and Hugh Jackman smile.

I agree. I think that’s why the back half of the movie is a bit of a struggle for me. The “affair” story line is kinda a miss and you’re furthering this romance I didn’t connect with. I would have been very happy with Jenny Lind being dropped or part reduced to have more scenes and another song for Zendaya and Efron to flesh out their burgeoning romance at that point.

Hmm, good point. Maybe they didn’t realize she wasn’t good enough until after the fact? Maybe when the movie was nearly complete they realized she wouldn’t work? Regardless, it was the weakest song in the movie. A real snoozer. I would have rather that time have been to one of the other characters - like Efron and Zendaya.

And honestly I looked up the rest of the nominees that year and if anyone won above him then it would've been ridiculous. I can see an argument for someone not even being nominated that deserved it but out of all the nominees Leo was definitely the winner that year for sure.

While I did enjoy the movie, I will stand against the the look of it. It's too CGI'ed for me. That prop choreography, I don't think it's real. It is all a good spectacle, but can't help but think it would be much better if they actually, instead of CGI, used actual props or theaters or animals or real mustaches.

Not to invite myself, but I would totally do that with you. Or you could basically have a guest each time who picks a different apocalypse movie and then talks about it. I can already think of at least a few.

Thinking about it more, there are an awful lot of movies from the 1990s with a similar aesthetic. You know, future dystopias taking influences from the same movies (the aforementioned The Warriors and Escape From New York and the like), often adaptations, that take comic book, cartoon, and/or video game imagery and utilize a very literal interpretation in formulating its imagery. I'm thinking this film, Super Mario Bros., Tank Girl, Johnny Mnemonic, and the like. We could do a limited series podcast on these kind of movies; call it "Pixelated Dystopia" or "Four Color Apocalypse."

Well, I loved The Revenant and I thought Di Caprio's performance was Oscar-worthy. Granted, every year there are a dozen performances that are Oscar-worthy, and awarding any artistic achievement a golden statue in some sort of attempt at quantifying the "best" in a particular year is reductive and foolish at best, but I'm glad he got his statue.

Not so much a C&O but just some (hopefully) helpful info for Paul vis Michael Bay and whether or not he could be Canadian: one simple way to tell if your DVDs are being shipped from Canada (and if they were ever intended for sale in Canada) is to check the packaging. It would have to have bilingual copy on the case (with the title in both English and French) and it would need the rating from Canada's film classification board. If it doesn't have those things, it's probably an American region 1 disc, or maybe just some kind of bootleg. Speaking of bilingualism and movies, you guys really need to watch Bon Cop Bad Cop sometime.

Here a pretty great look at the short-lived Jeremy Renner app and how hilariously terrible it was before it was apparently destroyed by trolls.

I know the corrections and omissions are meant for the main show, but I wanted to point out that Grace Jones’s May Day from A View to a Kill was not the Bond villain with killer thighs (although it wouldn’t surprise me if she has killed people with her legs before). It was actually Xenia Onatopp (played by Famke Janssen) in Goldeneye.

Idealistic young protagonist leaves to join a resistance, hooks up with cocky criminal with a ship, must drop a bomb into the vulnerable opening in the bad guy's base before it can fire its super laser, but not before a "I am your father" speech with the villain. The movie world has giant cities on treads going around "eating" smaller tracked cities because fuel and resources and something. This is called “municipal darwinism" in the movie. I'm sure that was meant to be some kind of profound social commentary. The whole thing is just a mess.